Agencies urged to check operation of language schools

BAGUIO CITY – Concerned sectors in the city are calling on various government agencies overseeing the operation of language schools to check whether or not the said institutions are operating pursuant to the parameters of the permits issued to their operators.

Observers of some language schools in the city, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from their foreign and local employers, disclosed that some of the language schools have already deviated from the permits issued to them to teach English as a secondary language when they have branched out to offer other trainings not related to the permits issued to their operators.

Further, some of the language schools have foreign school officials who are performing duties and responsibilities in violation of the permit issued to them by the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation (BID), thus, the need for immigration officers to ensure that the foreigners are not depriving the Filipinos of the employment opportunities given to foreigners.

Aside from venturing on unauthorized and unpermitted trainings that entail additional expenses on the part of the enrolled students and naïve applicants promised with a teaching job, and OJT, the sources revealed that some language schools teaching English as a second language, now also cohorts and are manipulated by an organized academic professionals, are allegedly involved in illegal recruitment which should also be investigated by personnel of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to prevent the unauthorized deployment of individuals overseas. Hence, the agency shall be akin to sensing a “new faces of modern day professional scammers” in the ESL industry.

“We want the alleged illegal practices of some operators of language schools to stop because they are taking advantage of the desire of individuals to have good paying jobs to justify their unauthorized collections of large sums of money in the guise of added training that will enrich their skills and knowledge among others but which are not in accordance to the permits issued to them by the concerned government agencies,” one of the sources stressed.

The sources also appealed to the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation (BID) to monitor the compliance of foreigners who issued alien registration relative to the terms and conditions of the said permits considering that there are foreigners who are working in various language schools in the city who are going beyond the limitations of their permits depriving Filipinos the appropriate employment opportunities; and even some workplace are perceived turned into a “household” where there are alleged elements of “slavery”, lest, a form of social injustice, still lives to our generation of today.

Moreover, the sources also challenged the SEC to look into the misuse or abuse of registrations issued to professional associations and incorporations, also the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Technical Education Skills and Development Authority (TESDA) to look into the alleged abuse of memorandum of agreement and violations of a number of language institutions to existing labor laws and the permits issued to the operators to stop them from abusing the Filipino work force while giving substantial benefits to their foreign workers.

The sources claimed that their revelations are simply the tip of the iceberg and that concerned government agencies should ascertain the gravity of the problems in language schools and the serious violations they are committing by investigating thoroughly the allegations. By HENT